Catalysts for Conservation
Exploring Behavioral Science Insights
for Natural Resource Investments
Lynn Scarlett, James Boyd, and Anna Brittain,
with Leonard Shabman and Tim Brennan
© 2013 Resources for the Future.
Resources for the Future is an independent, nonpartisan think tank that, through its social science research, enables policymakers and stakeholders to make better, more informed
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ... 1
Introduction ... 9
Part One: Overview—Theories of Attitude Formation and Behavior ... 11
I. Challenges Associated with a Broad Overview ... 11
II. Social Science Insights on Behavior: A Broad Summary ... 12
A. Attitude Formation and Behavior ... 13
Part One—Summary of Key Findings ... 18
Part Two: Social and Behavioral Research and Applications ... 18
I. How Individuals Think and Act ... 18
A. Social Psychology ... 19
B. Social Norms and Conformity ... 32
C. Risk Perceptions—Experts and Public Attitudes ... 38
D. Economics and Individual Behavior ... 39
Part Two (I: A–D)—Social Psychology, Norms, Risk Perception, and Behavioral
Economics: Summary of Key Findings ... 42
II. Collective Settings for Conservation Actions—Businesses and Communities ... 43
A. Businesses and the Marketplace ... 43
Part Two—(II: A) Business Behaviors: Summary of Key Findings ... 59
B. Communities and Collective Action ... 60
Part Two—(II: B) Collective Settings: Summary of Key Findings ... 88
III. Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings ... 89
A. The Policy Context—Insights from Economics ... 89
F A G A
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Part Two: (III. A–B)—Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings: Summary of
Key Findings ... 100
Part Three: Case Example—Payment for Environmental Services on Working Lands
... 102
I. Framing the Issue ... 102
II. The Setting ... 103
III. Converging Interests and the FRESP Process ... 104
A. Different Stakeholders—A Shared Interest ... 104
B. Building Trust and Finding Common Ground ... 104
C. New Participants and the Basic Vision ... 105
D. Building a Credible Analytical Case ... 105
E. Identifying Barriers and Challenges ... 106
IV. FRESP Is Created ... 107
A. The FRESP Vision ... 107
B. Addressing the Design Challenges ... 108
V. Lessons Learned ... 112
Part Four: Communicating Climate Change ... 114
I. Climate Change: The Communications Challenge ... 114
A. Psychological Barriers to Action ... 115
B. Logic Schism and Moving toward the Middle ... 116
C. Framing and Narrative ... 117
II. Climate Brokers and the “Right Science” ... 119
III. Communicating Impacts with Local Experiences ... 121
IV. Networks and Innovative Marketing ... 121
V. Communicating Climate Change: Summary of Key Findings ... 122
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Lynn Scarlett, James Boyd, and Anna Brittain
with contributions from Leonard Shabman and Tim Brennan
1Executive Summary
Scientific complexities and uncertainties, interconnections, and the need to coordinate across jurisdictions and scales challenge our ability to address environmental issues. These challenges and their solutions are linked to the attitudes, choices, and actions of individuals, families, communities, businesses, lawmakers, and nations. Ultimately, their resolution depends on scientific knowledge, technology developments, economic incentives, legal and institutional innovations, and, most importantly, public awareness, interest, and capacity to act.
What are the ingredients for successful action? Scientists offer insights about “how the world works”—its physical, chemical, biological, and other components, functions, and systems. Economists offer tools for examining costs, benefits, trade-offs, incentives, and their relationship to public and private institutions. Political scientists assess governance, public attitudes, and decisionmaking by both the public and its representatives. Sociologists and psychologists probe the “people factor”—why do people think what they think, how do values and attitudes form, and how do they affect choices and actions? There is also the looming presence of communications—understanding how people respond to different messages and media, targeting messages to specific audiences, and tracking how messages spread.
This report summarizes insights from multiple social and behavioral science research disciplines to shed light on environmental attitudes and corresponding behaviors. We define environmental behavior as the decisions and choices that (a) affect the efficient and effective use of natural resources; (b) reduce waste (energy, water, material, and so on); (c) reduce pollution; and (d) facilitate the management of terrestrial and marine ecosystems to restore, enhance, or preserve these ecosystems, their functions, and interconnected biodiversity.
Because of the breadth of relevant research, the report presents selected highlights. This information can enhance efforts to engage individuals in saving energy, recycling water, or
undertaking countless other personal actions that reduce environmental impacts. It can help agencies engage communities and can aid companies trying to protect species, sustain water supplies in small and large watersheds, or reduce the impacts of energy or mineral extraction. It may help governments communicate environmental challenges and work in concert to address them.
In this review, we address questions directly pertinent to environmental actions and
conservation. We apply an “individual, commercial, community, and society” organizational structure to the discussion; however, many of the ideas apply to all four behavioral contexts.
1
Scarlett, visiting scholar and co-director of Resources for the Future’s (RFF) Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth (CMEW); [email protected]. Boyd, senior fellow and co-director of CMEW; [email protected]. Brittain, manager of CMEW;
General Theories on Attitudes and Behavior
The literature on attitude formation and on the relationship between attitudes and actions is extensive and includes a vast subset of research specifically focused on environmental attitudes and behavior. Attitude formation itself involves more than knowledge; it involves a combination of knowledge, affect, and intentions. Even accounting for these factors, behavior does not flow directly from “attitudes” or “values.” Instead, attitudes (including norms, beliefs, and values) interrelate with the situational context that influences perceived costs and benefits and with other competing values that jointly affect environmentally significant behavior.
Summary of Selected Findings—Attitudes and Behavior
The link between attitudes and behavior is strongest when contextual factors don’t impose high costs or constraints.
Drivers of behavioral change vary by type of conservation action, underscoring the potential relevance of an environmental problem–oriented approach to behavior change strategies. Approaches that involve continuous learning are more effective than “passive audience”
approaches.
Environmental information may be more effective if it is specific rather than general.
Individual Attitudes and Environmental Actions
People often use mental shortcuts to help them make decisions. These shortcuts are both necessary and useful, but they can also reinforce biases, prejudices, and ideological divides. These mental shortcuts also apply to how people interrelate with others. In the context of environmentally significant behavior, this phenomenon has led to increasing recognition of the importance of
identifying community champions (both individuals and institutions) and organizing opinion-leader interventions.
Neoclassical economics tends to assume self-interest and rationality on the part of individuals, businesses, and other institutions. Although economists are aware that people are not always self-interested and rational, they consider self-interest a good baseline assumption regarding people’s motivations and rationality a reasonably good predictor of behavior. The emerging field of behavioral economics is increasingly confronting the messier truths about human behavior, including the
psychological biases and departures from rationality and self-interest. Given interacting motivations, incentives alone may not lead to widespread adoption of a desired behavior.
Selected Findings—Individuals
“Motivated reasoners,” influenced by values and emotion, may discount or ignore information that challenges their existing attitudes.
People use mental shortcuts, so decisions and actions are often shaped by context, biases, and other subconscious responses.
People are more likely to cooperate with those they perceive as similar to themselves, or as peers.
People have strong loss aversion, so framing issues in terms of losses avoided can be more effective than framing them in terms of gains.
Commercial Sector, Consumers, and Environmental Choices and Actions
Beyond individual behaviors, this report examines how information, social settings, and other factors affect incentives and choices; how market and policy rules, contracts, and structures affect incentives that, in turn, influence choices in the marketplace; and how processes of public engagement and collaboration affect choices and action. Within this context, a significant analytical focus regarding environmental behavior has centered on profit maximization and externalities. However, the theory of change implied by the “profit maximization and externalities” perspective is limited and somewhat unrealistic.
This “foundational theory” of business behavior is limited because it focuses on government as the primary creator of environmental business incentives. Yet profit-related environmental business incentives take a much wider variety of forms, many unrelated to government policy per se. The foundational theory is unrealistic because it oversimplifies the relationships among business, government, and the public. The theory works cleanly as a theory of change only if one assumes that the government acts only in the broad public interest, the public interest is clear and uncontroversial, and government action is effective and itself uncontroversial. Conservation strategy in this naïve scenario would take the form of demonstrating and communicating the existence of public environmental costs or benefits associated with business activity, presenting that evidence to the government, and waiting for a corrective policy response.
Closer observation shows that businesses routinely engage in environmentally beneficial
behaviors that are not motivated directly by statutes or regulations. They engage in a variety of actions that go “beyond compliance” and that can loosely be described as voluntary. But, though voluntary, these actions should usually not be considered altruistic. Businesses can be strategic and sophisticated when it comes to the richer social and political factors that affect their long-run profitability. This section describes a range of factors that can lead businesses to go beyond their legal and regulatory responsibilities.
Selected Findings—Commercial Sector
Voluntary, beyond-compliance environmental business actions are more likely to be driven by profit motivations than by altruism.
Pro-environment business behaviors are driven by a range of consumer, employee, business partner, and community factors.
Marketing, labeling, and certification programs have been shown to influence consumer behavior (and thus the features of products sold by businesses), but the environmental benefits of labeling and certification programs are poorly understood.
Supply chain motivations for beyond-compliance behavior are most likely to be associated with large companies and valuable brands.
Collective Action, Communities, and Collaboration
Extensive research also points to the relevance and potential of collaborative and community interventions to identify adverse environmental consequences and galvanize actions to address them—even in contexts of conflicting values and environmental attitudes. Natural resource
management decisions often involve common pool resources in which access to resources is unrestricted or difficult to restrict. Increasingly, decision contexts involve multiple governing
jurisdictions, many agencies at different levels of government, public and private lands and resources, and numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and individual stakeholders.
Successful conservation in these settings requires the actions of multiple public-sector, nonprofit, and private-sector participants working in concert toward common goals. Community engagement becomes, thus, an important aspect of addressing complex environmental issues. The broadening of such community efforts underscores the importance of community-levelbehavioral insights regarding how collections of interests and stakeholders engage, collaborate, build legitimacy, and resolve
conflicts around conservation issues.
Elinor Ostrom and others have described the emergence of co-managed common pool resources in a variety of settings in which communities craft complex governing networks. Also, a growing
literature addresses the ecological outcomes of collaborative conservation processes and networks and the relationship between these processes and norms, changes in norms or attitudes, and conservation action. Much of the literature on collaboration focuses on the design of collaborative processes, but critical to their relevance to conservation is the effect of collaboration on behavior and relationships.
A number of studies suggest that collaborative decision processes can influence norms and actions. Two aspects of this research are particularly relevant. First, research on the role of cognitive processes and heuristics contributes to an understanding of how collaborative processes, particularly those involving face-to-face engagement, can influence choices and decisions. Second, some research on collaborative processes has explored their relationship to trust-building and the role of trust in influencing actions. The general literature on cognition, values, collaboration, and trust points to the importance of both institutional structures and the design of collaborative processes.
Selected Findings—Collective Settings
Conservation, like a growing number of public-sector activities, increasingly involves governments acting as facilitators, brokers, and partners.
Governing networks and co-management of common pool resources can: (a) enhance legitimacy, (b) create and utilize the social capital of local knowledge of local conditions, (c) tailor responses to local conditions, and (d) offer flexibility in the context of changing conditions.
The trend toward public-engagement approaches to natural resource management and decisionmaking reflects the growing complexity of natural resource issues.
Collaborative processes can influence norms and actions, build trust, and enhance perceptions of legitimacy of information and actions.
Collaboration and Science
The credibility, relevance, and legitimacy of knowledge determine its impact on decisionmaking. Credibility refers to the extent to which the science is perceived to meet technical standards, relevance refers to user perceptions of the appropriateness of the knowledge for addressing their needs, and legitimacy relates to perceptions that the processes for generating and using the information are procedurally fair. The importance of credibility, relevance, and legitimacy has turned attention to the role of collaborative processes in bringing together scientists, stakeholders, and decisionmakers. Some
research suggests that collaborative approaches contribute to perceptions of legitimacy, play a role in changing attitudes and behavior, and may facilitate collective action. Significant empirical research affirms that early involvement of intended users may correlate with greater linking of science to decisions after project completion.
Several emerging decision frameworks reflect the analytical–deliberative approach to science and decisionmaking that links scientists, stakeholders, and decisionmakers in ongoing dialogue and relationships. These include joint fact-finding, collaborative values assessment, collaborative adaptive management, and computer-aided dispute resolution processes. Many of these processes involve science–decisionmaking boundary organizations.
Selected Findings—Collaboration and Science
Early and ongoing interactions between scientists and users of scientific information improve the effectiveness of such interactions.
Four factors influence individual trust: (a) a willingness to take risks, (b) responses to betrayal, (c) a sense of altruism, and (d) an assessment of the likelihood that others in a particular setting will act in trustworthy ways. Whereas the first three elements are relatively stable personal attributes, the fourth is subject to change.
Collaborative and network governance—both formal and informal—must: (a) provide
accountability and flexibility; (b) be characterized by inclusivity in collaboration, accompanied by shared agreement on the processes and rules that will guide decisionmaking; (c) allow for ongoing learning;and (d) attend to the broader policy context and ensure that existing rules and authorities allow for and facilitate coordination.
Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings
An obvious way to promote conservation through public policy is to build support for
conservation in the electorate, so that public officials give conservation prominence on their agendas. Of course, even if that support exists, barriers hinder its translation into policy action. Investments in building support for conservation through messaging and social marketing occur at city, county, and regional scales, in collaborative settings, and are pursued by universities, scientific organizations, and environmental NGOs. Environmental challenges like nonrenewable energy and climate change have led to the creation of independent information and communication organizations devoted solely to these issues. A growing body of research is available on how people process and internalize
information and how to engage audiences (including on scientific or technical topics) and to address or circumvent belief in misinformation.
Selected Findings—Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings
Because most citizens have little direct interaction with the institutions or organizations that manage risk, they establish risk perceptions based on other cues and indirect sources of information, such as the media.
Three strategies have been identified that can increase the effectiveness of countering misinformation: (a) “warnings” that coincide with exposure to misinformation, (b) repetition of a retraction or correction without repeating the misinformation, and (c) corrections that tell an alternative story that can fill the “coherence gap” otherwise left when a belief is called into question. The last strategy has been found to be most effective.
When presenting new or corrective information, it is often critical to do it in a way that provides identity or self-affirmation—a way that supports or is consistent with a conclusion that affirms the audience’s worldview.
Social marketing campaigns should focus on building and supporting social capital and should work through existing social networks rather than appealing to private individuals. The most significant gains from social marketing may be realized by targeting networks, civil society organizations, and other broadly defined “communities.”
A Case Example—Florida Ranchland Environmental Services Project
One case study on the origins and structure of a new payment for ecosystem services (PES) program in Florida helps illustrate how basic principles of collaborative decisionmaking brought stakeholder agreement on the implementation of a market-like environmental program. The Florida program has market-like features designed to encourage private landowners—in this case, cattle ranchers—to supply ecosystem services. The program took many years to develop and implement and involved collaboration among a wide variety of stakeholders.
Selected Findings—Florida Ranchland Environmental Services Project
A combination of broad-based technical understanding and facilitation skills were important both to the process and to the ultimate design of the program, given the need to reconcile the participants’ often differing interests in the collaboration.
Designing a PES program demands the willingness and the opportunity to “learn while doing.” Learning while doing has implications for program design. First, one needs pilot sites and funding to support them. Second, one needs time to learn through conversations and experimentation to reach agreement among the collaborators.
One must develop credible technical arguments to support the PES design. Credibility can be enhanced via transparent, iterative interactions around technical analysis, and by engaging credible and trusted scientific experts.
Case Example—Communicating Climate Change
Despite the significant amount of research on climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as efforts to build public awareness and connect science and decisionmaking, broad awareness of the available research on climate change messaging, communications, and social marketing is lacking. Many research findings are nested within more overarching communications and marketing research, including the importance of knowing the audience, using narratives and frames in keeping with audience worldviews, identifying trusted community messengers, and using stories and imagery to capture attention and help messages stick. Research suggests that interventions could have broader and deeper impact by targeting social networks and horizontal marketing between organizations. Although some of the findings may seem straightforward (e.g., using metaphors, making messages personal, and appealing to the heart over the head), their implementation is still uncommon in many professional, academic, and scientific spheres.
Selected Findings—Communicating Climate Change
The majority of climate change messaging is analytical, despite overwhelming evidence from social psychology that the experiential processing system is a much stronger motivator for action.
Shifting from frames focused on the probability of climate change to frames emphasizing climate risks may better motivate behavioral change. Many people are cognizant of low-probability, high-consequence events and the need to address them (e.g., by purchasing fire insurance).
Climate change communications need to use carefully selected metaphors and examples that prompt new ways of thinking about the personal relevance of climate change.
Individualistic framing of climate change may be problematic. Some behavioral and social scientists argue that communication processes need to promote civic engagement and public dialogue, rather than focusing on small-scale behavior change.
Conclusion
The social sciences have a lot to say about how conservation programs work, how conservation science (natural science) is interpreted and acted on by individuals and institutions, and how environmental advocates can motivate green behaviors. A recurring theme in our synthesis is the cognitive and behavioral implications of complexity. Conservation and environmental issues are distinctive in that they often involve large-scale, interconnected social and biophysical phenomena and trigger correspondingly diverse social reactions and conflicts. Conservation science plays a
schizophrenic role in this complexity. In helping us understand and communicate the workings of the natural world, science provides important tools to help people grapple with the unknown. However, as conservation science deepens, it also reinforces the complexities and uncertainties associated with both environmental problems and their possible solutions. It may be tempting for conservation advocates to think that, if only the public understood “the science,” they would be converted to the cause.
However, even if “the science” is conclusive, the social implications rarely are. More typically, the science is not conclusive and its communication to “publics” reveals uncertainties, opening the door to doubt. Thus, better science by itself, conducted and communicated in isolation from the social
interests it is meant to inform, may have a limited contribution to conservation advocacy. Much more promising is the integration of science with collaborative processes that bring stakeholders and knowledge providers together to iteratively frame the issues and develop data, tools, policies, and solutions.
A contribution of our report is the organizational distinction between individual, collaborative, and social behavior. We think that this is a useful device for drawing distinctions among the very diverse social science disciplines, theories, and applications reviewed. We think that collaborative behaviors are of particular ongoing relevance to conservation advocates. However, too much can be made of the distinctions. Social messaging clearly relies on individual-scale psychological factors, not just social norms. Collaborations are collections of individuals, and so on. Our analysis of business behavior is perhaps the place where the distinctions most clearly dissolve.
Businesses are themselves collaborations of individuals, leading to analyses of both the role of the individual in a business (as employee, manager, or shareholder) and the ways in which individuals cooperate as members of the same business. Also, businesses routinely find it in their interest to collaborate with the communities in which they operate and with government and NGO stakeholders. They are also both influenced by social norms (e.g., current feelings regarding tobacco or genetically modified organisms) and manipulators of those norms via sophisticated marketing resources. Of course, they are ultimately beholden to the consumer, in all his or her irrational, biased glory.
Despite the wide expanse of research surveyed in this study, empirical examination of natural resource conservation behaviors per se remains thin. To date, conservation practice has been dominated by natural scientists. Conservation behavior has long been an interest of social scientists, but is often pursued from the desktop rather than the field. Philosophical, not just practical barriers have also inhibited joint understanding. But that is all quickly changing. Conservation NGOs
increasingly embrace social goals as measures of their conservation effectiveness. Solutions-oriented natural scientists see human behavior as the key to making their science matter. And social scientists have become, not only more ecologically sophisticated, but also better at communicating the social importance of natural systems.
These trends suggest that ecological–behavioral conservation studies and interventions are poised to take an important step forward. Given that the complexities of human behavior clearly matter to conservation outcomes, we hope that this report will promote discussion of next steps.
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Lynn Scarlett, James Boyd, and Anna Brittain
with contributions from Leonard Shabman and Tim Brennan
Introduction
On July 26, 1943, news headlines in Los Angeles exclaimed that the city was under attack, not by foreign intruders but by a domestic threat—smog. Two decades later, an oily stew of polluted waters in the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Then Love Canal, an untamed depository of chemical wastes, erupted into the news with reports of toxins leaking into the soils of surrounding neighborhoods. These events galvanized environmental action in the United States, motivating civic, business, and legislative responses. Achievements were significant. Air is cleaner; some waste sites have been cleaned up; iconic species like the bald eagle once again thrive. Yet environmental challenges—in the United States and globally—persist and evolve in their extent and complexity.
The cartoon character, Pogo, quipped that “we have met the enemy and he is us.” The quip seems apt in contemplating the challenges of addressing persistent environmental problems. These
challenges link to the attitudes, choices, and actions of individuals, families, communities, businesses, lawmakers, and nations. Ultimately, their resolution depends on scientific knowledge, technology developments, economic incentives, legal and institutional innovations, and, most importantly, public awareness, interest, and capacity to act.
As the Pogo quip suggests, the “people factor” looms large. Increasingly, environmental challenges are characterized as “wicked problems,” in which formulating the problem and specifying the sought-after outcome often is the problem.2 These problems present inherent trade-offs among many
environmental management choices and sometimes significant distributional effects. Environmental interventions can impact people, their traditions, their communities, and their livelihoods—affecting some more than others. Even defining problems can evoke controversy, provoke skepticism, and stall action.
Today, scientific uncertainties, complexities, interconnectedness, and the need to coordinate across scales and institutions amplify the difficulties. Consider the scale of just a handful of current environmental challenges. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, linked to a changing climate, increased 16-fold worldwide between 1900 and 2008. The emissions spring from actions of billions of people, thousands of companies, and the policy choices of all nations. The International Risk Governance Council reports that an estimated 25 percent of fish stocks are overexploited or fully depleted. Some marine resources have dimensions suitable for action by one community or nation; others require regional or international action. Even within a single nation, like the United States, challenges involve actions of millions of people, dozens of
2
K. Leong, D. J. Decker, T. B. Lauber, D. B. Raik, and W. F. Siemer, “Overcoming Jurisdictional Boundaries through Stakeholder Engagement and Collaborative Governance: Lessons Learned from White-Tailed Deer Management in the US,” in Beyond the Rural Divide: Cross-Continental Perspectives on the Differentiated Countryside and Its Regulation, ed. K. Anderson et al. (United Kingdom: Emerald Group, 2009).
communities, and multiple states. In the western United States, for example, a recent Bureau of Reclamation report projects prospects of severe droughts lasting as long as 50 years, presenting significant water supply–demand challenges for seven states. The actions of one state in the Colorado River Basin affect all the others.
What does this setting mean for thinking about the ingredients of successful action? Insights drawn from many forms of expertise and experiences are relevant. Scientists offer insights about “how the world works”—its physical, chemical, biological, and other components, functions, and systems. Economists offer tools for examining costs, benefits, trade-offs, incentives, and their relationship to public and private institutions. Political scientists assess governance, public attitudes, and
decisionmaking by both the public and its representatives. Sociologists and psychologists probe the “people factor”—why do people think what they think, how do values and attitudes form, and how do they affect choices and actions? And, of course, there is the looming presence of communications— how messages form and how people respond to different messages and different delivery modes.
Many forms of knowledge” come into play in efforts to define, describe, and determine responses to environmental challenges. But purveyors of environmental actions—whether governments, nonprofit organizations and foundations, civil society, or the business community—still struggle to bring all these “knowledges” together to motivate and sustain environmental improvements. They struggle to inform public attitudes, public policies, and on-the-ground actions with scientific knowledge. They struggle to heighten individual awareness of environmental issues and to help translate that awareness into meaningful actions. They struggle to catalyze and engage communities, economic sectors, and lawmakers to address environmental problems.
This report synthesizes insights from multiple social and behavioral science research disciplines to shed light on environmental attitudes and corresponding behaviors. Because of the breadth of
relevant research, the report is not exhaustive; instead, it presents selected highlights of this research. This information can enhance efforts to successfully engage individuals in saving energy, recycling water, or undertaking countless other personal actions that reduce environmental impacts. It can help agencies mobilize communities and companies in efforts to protect sage grouse across 11 states, or sustain water supplies in small and large watersheds, or reduce the impacts of energy or mineral extraction. It may help nations communicate environmental challenges and work in concert to address them.
This report is written primarily for the benefit of environmental nonprofit organizations, environmental entrepreneurs, and philanthropies interested in advancing environmental goals and missions. The question for such individuals and institutions is: How might one influence behavior so that those goals are more likely to be met? In this context, behavioral insights yield instrumental insights—that is, they describe ways in which behavior can be influenced to move toward a given goal. The social sciences also sometimes consider what those goals should be. It is one thing to ask how, say, to influence people to drink less soda (an instrumental question); it is another thing to argue that drinking less soda is good for an individual or for society. Because this report is written for those who begin with an interest in advancing environmental goals, our focus is on what is known about how attitudes form and what influences environmentally significant behavior. Our purpose is not to presume to articulate what values people should hold or how they should prioritize them.
Part One provides a broad overview of relevant issues drawn from the literature, including a summary of challenges associated with framing and understanding conservation attitudes and behaviors. Part Two examines these attitudes and behaviors within four related, but distinguishable, areas of inquiry—individual, commercial, community, and sociopolitical. Parts Three and Four provide
case examples that illustrate some of the report’s key themes. We conclude with a summary of findings in Part Five.
Part One: Overview—Theories of Attitude Formation and Behavior
Human values, attitudes, motivations, and actions affect environmental conditions and shape conservation behavior.3 We define environmental behavior as the decisions and choices that (a) affect the efficient and effective use of natural resources; (b) reduce waste (energy, water, material, etc.); (c) reduce pollution; and (d) facilitate management of terrestrial and marine ecosystems to restore, enhance, or preserve these ecosystems, their functions, and interconnected biodiversity. The extent and success of environmental actions depend, not only on understanding conservation ecology, but also on the economic, social, and cultural processes that influence such behavior.
The social sciences provide frameworks and experience relevant to understanding the
development and evaluation of human attitudes and actions and the processes of individual and social change. Insights from psychology, decision science, organization theory, political science, public administration, economics, social anthropology, marketing, sociology, and communications studies are specifically relevant. In addition, a growing literature on the sociology of science explores how
scientific information relevant to environmental issues is developed, communicated, comprehended, and applied in organizational and social settings.
I. Challenges Associated with a Broad Overview
The literature on attitude formation and the relationship between attitudes and actions is extensive and includes a vast subset of research specifically focused on environmental attitudes and behavior.4 This literature spans at least four decades. Several challenges complicate the distillation of this research and any attempts to draw conclusions from it.
What constitutes environmental action or behavior? Much behavior that is environmentally significant results from actions undertaken for other purposes, but which nonetheless impact the environment. In some cases, these actions (for example, electricity generation, mineral extraction, or commercial fishing) have environmental consequences that may be more extensive than individual consumption or household behavioral choices. Some social and behavioral research focuses on what forces shape and influence environmental attitudes and behaviors that are directly intended to reduce environmental impacts.5 Other research focuses on factors that influence environmental outcomes even where such outcomes are not the
3
We use the term “conservation” to reflect our primary focus on natural resources and ecosystem management but recognize that the discussion is also relevant to a broader suite of environmental issues, including human exposures to environmental risks, materials usage in production and consumption, and related public policies.
4
Thomas Dietz, and Paul Stern, eds., Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2008), http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12434.html.
5
See, for example, Stuart Cottrell, “Influence of Sociodemographics and Environmental Attitudes on General Responsible Environmental Behavior among Recreational Boaters, Environment and Behavior 35, no. 3 (2003): 347–375; Thomas Dietz, Paul C. Stern, and Gregory A. Guagnano, “Social Structural and Social Psychological Bases of Environmental Concern,” Environment and Behavior 30 (1998): 450–471; Niklas Fransson, and Tommy Garling, “Environmental Concern: Conceptual Definitions, Measurement Methods, and Research Findings,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 19 (1999): 369–382; Jody Hines, Harold R. Hungerford, and Audrey N. Tomera, “Analysis and Synthesis of Research on Responsible Environmental Behavior: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Environmental Education 18, no. 2 (1986/87): 1–8; Paul C. Stern, “Psychology and the Science of Human–Environment Interactions,” American Psychologist 55, no. 5 (2000): 523–530.
primary motivating purpose of the individual or organizational activity.6 Others distinguish between behaviors that directly cause environmental change and behaviors that are more indirect—for example, behaviors that shape the context in which choices are made.7 Finally, one can measure environmentally significant behaviors in terms of intentions or outcomes; this distinction “highlights the possibility that environmental intent may fail to result in environmental impact.”8
What kinds of environmentally significant behaviors are relevant? Conservation and
environmental behaviors take many forms, including personal consumption patterns, ways people manage their private property, actions in the workplace, membership in conservation organizations, engagement in protests and activism, support for environmentally significant public policies, and so on. The relationships among values, attitudes, and actions may vary, depending on the types of environmental and conservation activities.
What are the actual effects of behavior intended to enhance conservation or environmental outcomes, and how does information about these effects influence attitudes and actions?
Individuals and organizations may support particular actions, believing that they will be environmentally beneficial, even if the actions produce little conservation benefit. For example, recycling household and commercial waste may not reduce overall environmental impacts (life-cycle analyses of certain types of recycling indicate that such efforts do not always yield net benefits in terms of energy, water, and material savings or emissions reductions). In other words, improving environmental outcomes involves more than changing attitudes and
intentions. This observation suggests that those pursuing environmental improvements often need to grapple with complex sources of information to select actions that produce net environmental benefits. The importance of such specialized information to the identification of, and motivations for, environmentally significant actions suggests that research on how individuals, organizations, and communities receive and react to scientific and technical analyses is particularly relevant to efforts to enhance conservation. The complexities of
understanding and measuring environmental outcomes also underscore the importance of life-cycle analysis, net benefits analysis, and related kinds of analytical tools, though a review of those tools is beyond the scope of this report.
II. Social Science Insights on Behavior: A Broad Summary
Theories and research on environmental values, attitudes, motivations, and actions have
proliferated over the past four decades in the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, organization theory, political science, and public administration, among others. Other research—for example, on risk perceptions, knowledge transfers, corporate cultures and management, and multijurisdictional governance—also offers relevant insights for understanding attitudes and environmentally significant behavior. We define such behavior as “the extent to which [the behavior] changes the availability of materials or energy from the environment or alters the structure and dynamics of ecosystems or the biosphere itself.”9
6
For example, Eugene Rosa and Thomas Dietz suggest that understanding the forces of global environmental change comes less from understanding the drivers of environmental impacts and more from understanding what drives reductions in those impacts. Eugene Rosa and Thomas Dietz, “Climate Change and Society: Speculation, Construction and Scientific Investigation,” International Sociology 13 no. 4 (1998): 438.
7
Paul Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56 no. 3 (2000): 407–424.
8
Ibid., 408.
9
Some aspects of environmentally significant behavior remain poorly understood. For example, a well-recognized “value–action” gap has been demonstrated by research showing that environmental values do not necessarily result in corresponding environmental action.10 Simple, transferable explanations are elusive. Similarly, research on the relationships among environmental attitudes, cultural context, and cognitive biases is a relatively new field. Notable gaps remain in our
understanding of the decision processes, institutions, organizational rules, communities, and broader political units that affect environmental attitudes and behavior. But despite these knowledge gaps, some broad conclusions can be drawn from the extensive theoretical, empirical, and practical research available to us.
A. Attitude Formation and Behavior
Several consistent themes recur, across different research disciplines, in much of the work on attitudes and environmentally significant behavior. These include four general observations.
Multiple factors shape attitudes and link attitudes to environmentally significant behavior. Motivations for environmentally significant behavior vary by the type of action.
Many different types of environmental issues unfold at different scales and within widely varying decision settings, affecting which participants, attitudes, and behaviors are relevant. The relevance, credibility, and perceived legitimacy of information affect the learning and use
of information.
A-1. Multiple Factors Shape Attitudes and Link Attitudes to Behavior
Some early research on environmental attitudes and behavior applied a linear model, assuming that knowledge was linked to attitudes, which in turn affected behavior.11 Subsequent research has largely invalidated the linear model.12 Not surprisingly, environmental behavior is more difficult to predict and involves numerous interrelated factors, though “lack of knowledge explains some of the weak relationship between environmental concern and environmentally responsible behavior.”13 Attitude formation itself involves more than knowledge; it involves a combination of knowledge, affect, and intentions.14 Even accounting for these factors, behavior does not flow directly from “attitudes” or “values.” Instead, attitudes (including norms, beliefs, and values) interrelate with the situational context that influences perceived costs and benefits and with other competing values that, jointly, affect environmentally significant behavior. But even the perception of costs and benefits is
10
Although a growing body of research has explored this gap, the factors that explain it are various and context specific. Andrew Darnton, Jake Elster-Jones, Karen Lucas, and Mike Brooks, “Promoting Pro-Environmental Behaviour: Existing Evidence to Inform Better Policy Making: Summary Report,” study prepared for the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Westminster, no date).
11
Stuart Cottrell, “Influence of Sociodemographics and Environmental Attitudes on General Responsible Environmental Behavior among Recreational Boaters,” Environment and Behavior 35 no. 3 (2003): 347–375. See, for example, L. Ajzen and M. Fishbein, “Attitudinal and Normative Variables as Predictors of Specific Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27 (1973): 41– 57; M. Fishbein and L. Ajzen, “Attitudes toward Objects as Predictors of Single and Multiple Behavioral Criteria,” Psychological Review 81 (1974): 59–74; M. P. Malony, M. Ward, and G. Braucht, “A Revised Scale for the Measurement of Ecological Attitudes and Knowledge,” American Psychologist 30 (1975): 787–790.
12
Cottrell, “Influence of Sociodemographics,” 349.
13 Niklas Fransson and Tommy Garling, “Environmental Concern: Conceptual Definitions, Measurement Methods, and Research Findings,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 19 (1999): 369–382. The authors point to 17 studies that show that knowledge of issues and of behavior strategies were important moderators of whether attitudes predicted behavior (373).
14
complex and includes, for example, community expectations, legal and institutional factors, habits and routines, and personal capabilities, along with direct monetary impacts.15
In the 1990s, several researchers analyzed a large data set on environmental attitudes and
behavior.16 This research shows that general support for environmental goals (positive environmental attitudes) is associated with the expectation of harmful consequences to the environment and
adherence to a cluster of values, such as altruism, among other variables. Experimental tests have shown that activation of environmental behavior requires both an awareness of adverse consequences associated with an environmentally damaging behavior and a sense of personal responsibility for those consequences.17 But even where such awareness and sense of responsibility exist, pro-social (environmental) norms “will not be activated in situations where the personal costs are perceived as too high.”18 Stern notes that “the key to behavioral change is the immediate context of behavior, not deeper values.”19 The link between attitudes and behavior is, thus, strongest when contextual factors do not impose high costs or constraints.20
Setting details aside, the overall conclusion is that conservation and environmental strategies aimed at behavior change should focus not on isolated factors, but rather on bundles of them. In this regard, consider Gardner and Stern, who describe several types of interventions perceived as
potentially affecting environmentally significant behavior.21 These include, for example: (a) moral and educational interventions, (b) material incentive structures, and (c) community (institutional)
management. These types of social interventions are likely to be more powerful in concert than in isolation.
A1-a. Moral and Educational Interventions: The contextual nature of environmental behavior suggests significant limits to both moral and educational initiatives, and, indeed, such efforts have shown limited results in empirical analyses. For example, research shows that “education
interventions by themselves have little or no effect in promoting new pro-environmental behaviors.”22 However, research regarding the influence of education points to some specific opportunities. As noted earlier, understanding the potential adverse environmental and social consequences of certain behaviors can contribute to attitude formation and change. However, the understanding of how scientific knowledge of specific environmental effects influences attitudes and motivations to act is not well understood.23
A1-b. Incentives: A voluminous economics literature points to the influence of financial incentives (or disincentives) on environmental behavior. Although such incentives and disincentives affect behavior, their influence is determined (and sometimes limited) by other factors, including personal and social norms, knowledge, and institutional capacities.
15
Paul Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56 no. 3 (2000): 407– 424.
16
Thomas Dietz, Paul C. Stern, and Gregory A. Guagnano, “Social Structural and Social Psychological Bases of Environmental Concern,” Environment and Behavior 30 (1998): 450–471.
17
Paul Stern and Stuart Oskamp, “Managing Scarce Environmental Resources,” in Handbook of Environmental Psychology, ed. D. Stokols and I. Altman (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1987), 1055.
18
Paul Stern, “Psychology and the Science of Human–Environment Interactions,” American Psychologist 55, no. 5 (2000): 525.
19
Ibid.
20
G. A. Guagnano, P. Stern, and T. Dietz, “Influences on Attitude–Behavior Relationships: A Natural Experiment with Curbside Recycling, Environment and Behavior 27 (1995): 699–718.
21
G. T. Gardner and P. Stern, Environmental Problems and Human Behavior (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996).
22
Paul C. Stern, “Psychology and the Science of Human–Environment Interactions,” American Psychologist 55 no. 5 (2000): 526.
23
These confounding factors are evident in research regarding price incentives to motivate household participation in recycling, for example. The success of pay-as-you-throw recycling programs that offer free recycling alongside waste fees pegged to the amount of trash disposed depends both on the size of the fee and on program design (whether and what kind of trash bags or containers are used, program complexity, information provided, and so on). Attempts to site solid waste facilities reveal similar limits to the role of monetary incentives in influencing behavior, particularly where the proposed actions are perceived, at least in part, in moral terms. For example, changes in the levels of host-community compensation for the siting of waste facilities have resulted in little variation in opposition to siting.24 Researchers note the role of moral considerations over the role of financial compensation.25 This research also reveals the importance of direct citizen engagement in decisionmaking and its positive role in facilitating siting decisions.26
A1-c. Community Management: Extensive research points to the relevance and potential of place-based, community interventions to identify adverse environmental consequences and galvanize actions to address them—even in contexts of conflicting values and environmental attitudes. The following highlights recur in research on community engagement and community environmental management.
Community engagement is correlated with enhanced effectiveness of conservation actions, though effectiveness also depends on process and institutional design.
Collaborative and community-engagement processes can influence norms and actions by building trust and by providing social cues that affect environmental attitudes.
Collaborative processes influence problem-framing, which relates to one particular factor—perceptions of the capacity to act—identified as important to translating attitudes into action.
Summarizing research on the effectiveness of different types of interventions, Stern notes that “even incentive- and community-based approaches rarely produce much change on their own. By far the most effective change programs involve combinations.”27 In short, no type of intervention appears to affect behavior on its own. Affirming this conclusion, a recent study of existing evidence on
environmental behavior changes notes that behaviors are complex, with different audiences behaving differently and requiring tailored interventions; and behavior change is best motivated by “circular” rather than “linear” social processes, where partnerships that involve continuous learning are more effective than “passive audience” approaches, and feedback is critical.28 Reflecting on this complexity, the authors of that study conclude: “Policies that aim to encourage pro-environmental behavior need to reflect these complexities. They should combine multiple types of instruments in a ‘package’ of measures.”29
Because of the relevance of this work to understanding effective conservation, we provide greater detail and offer specific examples in subsequent sections (including the section on community action in Part Two and a Florida ecosystem services payment project in Part Three).
24
Carissa Schively, “Understanding the NIMBY and LULU Phenomena: Reassessing Our Knowledge Base and Informing Future Research,” Journal of Planning Literature 21 (2007): 260.
25
Ibid.
26
Robin R. Jenkins, Kelly M. Maguire, and Cynthia Morgan, Host Community Compensation and Municipal Solid Waste Landfills (National Center for Environmental Economics, US Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2002).
27
P. Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56, no. 3 (2000): 420.
28
Andrew Darnton et al., “Promoting Pro-Environmental Behaviour,” Executive Summary.
29
A-2. Motivations for Environmentally Significant Behavior Vary by Type of Action
No uniform system exists for the classification of types of environmentally significant behavior (or actions), which include the following.
Personal and household consumption decisions, which, in turn, break down into the purchase and use of major goods, such as houses and automobiles; the purchase of smaller or daily consumption items; household maintenance and operational decisions, such as thermostat settings for heating and cooling; and waste disposal decisions.
Resource stewardship by private landowners and managers, including farmers; by landholding corporations; and by the public sector managing public lands, waters, and other resources. Environmental citizenship and activism,including (a) membership in, and financial support for,
environmental organizations and (b) support for public policies, environmental movements, and campaigns.
Organizational engagement,including participation in the workplace, professional societies, or other groups that design products, set standards, or undertake other actions that have direct or indirect environmental consequences.
Several studies have shown that different behavior types may be motivated by different patterns of sociopsychological and sociodemographic predictors.30 One examination of different behavior types—consumer behaviors, environmental citizenship, policy support, and activism—concludes that one can predict each of these types of activities by different patterns of norms, beliefs, and values.31 That study further concludes that behavior is affected by a combination of personal values, knowledge of the adverse effects of certain actions, a sense of personal responsibility, knowledge of remedial actions, and the capacity to take action.
In addition, research on environmentally significant behavior suggests that the factors that determine individual political action are not the same as those for collective action.32 Environmental knowledge and a belief in the efficacy of individual action, among other factors, are more important for individual than for collective action. In contrast, the extent of acceptance of “an environmentalist creed” better explains collective environmental action.33
Because drivers of behavior change vary by type of conservation action, some researchers suggest a problem-oriented approach to behavior change strategies—one that identifies specific
environmentally important activities and determines “whose actions and which actions matter
most.”34 Following this line of analysis, Stern and Oskamp suggest that environmental information may be more effective if it is specific, rather than general.35
At least one meta-analysis provides support for this focused approach to change strategies,
showing a stronger relationship between eventual environmental action and positive attitudes toward
30
Paul Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56, no. 3 (2000): 407– 424.
31
Ibid., 420.
32
Donald E. Blake, “Contextual Effects on Environmental Attitudes and Behavior,” Environment and Behavior 33 (2001): 708–725, http://eab.sagepub.com/content/33/5/708.
33
Ibid.
34
Paul C. Stern, “Psychology and the Science of Human–Environment Interactions,” American Psychologist 55, no. 5 (2000): 527– 528.
35
Paul Stern and Stuart Oskamp, “Managing Scarce Environmental Resources,” in Handbook of Environmental Psychology, ed.D. Stokols and I. Altman (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1987), 1055.
specific actions than between eventual actions and more general positive attitudes toward environmental protection.36 Stern and Oskamp note that the failure to see a causal relationship between environmental attitudes and behavior appears, in part, to result from a “mismatch in specificity between the attitude measures, which are usually general, and behavioral indexes, which are usually specific.”37
A-3. Different Types of Environmental Issues Unfold at Different Scales and in Different
Settings
Environmental issues vary significantly in their characteristics, with implications for identifying the decisionmakers, information, and actions relevant to addressing them. Many environmental problems comprise “commons” dilemmas, as described by Elinor Ostrom and others.38 Other environmental issues have been described using a “needs, opportunities, abilities” model relating to consumer attitudes and behaviors.39 Charles Vlek usefully categorizes environmental problems in terms of levels of risk (personal, indoor, local, regional, fluvial, continental, and global).40 He notes that, at each scale, different actors—individual, organizational, institutional—are relevant (and potentially responsible) for diminishing harmful environmental effects.41 Addressing many environmental problems requires coordination among different actors. Problems at all scales or levels of risk involve some socio-behavioral considerations.
Recognizing these many differences, Stern and Oskamp suggest that “the best way to proceed is to study carefully the particular environmental problem of concern before trying to apply psychological theories.”42 Relevant questions, according to Stern and Oskamp, include “which actors can make an important difference by ameliorating, exacerbating, or preventing the problem? And for each type of actor, which actions have a large impact on the problem? Asking these questions requires a researcher to examine the environmental problem before applying theory, but to do so in a way that makes psychological theory relevant.”43
A-4. Relevance, Credibility, and Perceived Legitimacy Affect Learning and the Use of
Information
Substantial research concludes that the relationship between knowledge, attitudes, and behavior is neither linear nor simple. However, research also indicates that knowledge of alternative actions and their environmental consequences plays some role in activating behavior to reduce environmental impacts. This relevance underscores the significance of better understanding (a) how knowledge transfer and information content affect learning, perceived legitimacy of information, and the uses of knowledge in shaping choices and motivating action and (b) what mechanisms enhance the
effectiveness of efforts to link science and decisionmaking.
Two clusters of research are particularly relevant to this understanding. The first cluster is the growing body of research on the relationship between knowledge and affect, which helps to explain
36
Niklas Fransson and Tommy Garling, “Environmental Concern: Conceptual Definitions, Measurement Methods, and Research Findings,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 19 (1999): 369–382.
37
Stern and Oskamp, “Managing Scarce Environmental Resources,” 1053.
38
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
39
Charles Vlek, “Essential Psychology for Environmental Policy Making,” International Journal of Psychology 35, no. 2 (2010): 152.
40
Ibid., 156
41
Ibid.
42
Stern and Oskamp, “Managing Scarce Environmental Resources,” 1049.
43
attitude formation. The second cluster relates more specifically to science and decisionmaking in the context of environmental problems. This cluster addresses the design of “use-inspired” research, for example, and examines the conditions for effective communication and use of scientific and technical knowledge in decisionmaking.
Part One—Summary of Key Findings
The link between attitudes and behavior is strongest when contextual factors don’t impose high costs or constraints.
By far the most effective strategies for influencing attitudes and behavior involve combinations of interventions.
Drivers of behavior change vary by type of conservation action, underscoring the potential relevance of an environmental problem–oriented approach to behavior change strategies. Different audiences behave differently and require tailored interventions.
Approaches that involve continuous learning are more effective than “passive audience” approaches.
Environmental information may be more effective if it is specific rather than general.
Part Two: Social and Behavioral Research and Applications
In Part One, we provided an overview of theories, research, and brief examples that illustrate theories of behavior and knowledge formation/learning and evidence of their power to explain or change attitudes and behavior. We now apply an “individual, commercial, community, and society” organizational structure to our review and address questions directly pertinent to environmental actions and conservation. Though we organize the discussion around individuals, commerce, communities, and broader societal contexts, many of the ideas apply to all four behavioral contexts. For example, risk analysis and perception andmarketing insights apply to all four categories. Although much of the discussion summarizes theories and research findings across a spectrum of disciplines, we also offer several examples to provide a richer sense of situational details that can affect attitudes and actions. In Part Three, we offer a longer case study of a Florida ecosystem services payment program that illustrates many of the broader themes of this report. Part Four provides a closer look at climate change and issues of communication, attitude formation, and associated responses.
I. How Individuals Think and Act
The incentives, motivations, information, relationships, norms, and values of individuals are important to conservation design. Examples include “working landscapes” where conservation goals are pursued in partnership with farmers or other property owners; conservation actions in
relationship to commercial fishing operations; or household-level stewardship initiatives. Policies under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) initially failed to appreciate disincentives created by the ESA that reduced landowner motivations to protect and enhance habitat. Identification of the disincentives led to Safe Harbor Agreements and other policies that enhanced conservation outcomes. In China, incentive payments to households to monitor illegal wood harvesting resulted, unexpectedly, in the splitting of larger households into smaller units and increased demand for fuel, which undermined conservation goals. Other individualbehavioral insights relate to conservation efforts directed at families to motivate household-level changes in landscaping, home construction, and energy use. As a
general rule, however, behavioral insights have not been systematically incorporated into conservation planning.
Individual behavior may seem limited in its potential for broad-scale influence, but in aggregate its effects are significant. Including personal transportation and home electricity use, individual
households account for nearly one-third of carbon emissions in the United States.44 Improving energy efficiency and conservation, using currently available and effective technologies, could reduce
emissions in this sector by 20 percent in 10 years, equivalent to more than 7 percent of national emissions. With the application of innovative policy tools and emerging technologies, even larger reductions are within reach.
Vandenbergh and colleagues argue that adopting the most successful interventions and scaling to national coverage can be achieved only with insights from behavioral and social sciences and that laws and policies benefit from reflecting empirically grounded behavioral principles.45 We begin our
discussion by focusing on insights from psychology and social psychology in five areas that have important implications and ramifications for social and environmental outcomes. We then turn to social norms (what others in a given social context do or say), whether within one’s network of family, friends, and coworkers, or in a public context of strangers or relative strangers. Finally, we examine the role of communication in framing and agenda setting.
A. Social Psychology
This section is organized around the following concepts: (a) cognition and affect; (b) heuristics, framing, and priming; (c) the role of messengers and “liking;” (d) reciprocation and commitments; (e) incentives and interacting motivations; and (f) defaults.
Social psychology insights can be categorized in a variety of ways, and semantic challenges abound. For example, in The Social Animal, Elliot Aronson uses the categories of conformity,
communication and persuasion, social cognition, self-justification, aggression, prejudice, and liking.46 Social psychologist Robert Cialdini relies on the concepts of reciprocation, commitment and
consistency, social proof (or norms), liking, authority, and scarcity.47 Authors of a 2010 report
commissioned by the UK Institute for Government on influencing behavior through public policy use a pneumonic device, MINDSPACE (Messenger, Incentives, Norms, Defaults, Salience, Priming, Affect, Commitments, and Ego).48 All of these categorizations, however, include the concepts described below.
Scientists and other experts have often subscribed to a knowledge or information deficit view of behavior: when people fail to behave in ways that are believed by experts to be in their own or society’s best interest, the solution is to provide them with the knowledge they lack and/or persuade them to change their attitudes. However, social psychologist Elliot Aronson draws a critical distinction between informed opinions—which are primarily cognitive (“head” rather than “heart”) and,
therefore, open to change based on reasoning—and opinions that are both emotional and evaluative (attitudes), which are extremely difficult to change, particularly with direct communication.49 One
44
M. Vandenbergh, P. Stern, G. Gardner, T. Dietz, and J. Gilligan, “Implementing the Behavioral Wedge: Designing and Adopting Effective Carbon Emissions Reduction Programs,” Environmental Law Reporter 40 (2010): 10547–10554.
45
Ibid.
46
Elliot Aronson, The Social Animal, 9th ed. (New York: Worth Publishers, 2004), 1–514.
47 Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 3rd ed. (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007).
48
P. Dolan, M. Hallsworth, D. Halpern, D. King, and I. Vlaev, MINDSPACE: Influencing Behaviour through Public Policy (London: UK Institute for Government, 2010), http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/our-work/better-policy-making/mindspace-behavioural-economics.
49
